Cuba’s Role in the COVID-19 Pandemic

The small socialist state of Latin America is fighting against the disease more than most.

In 1959, Fidel Castro’s revolutionary 26th of July Movement and other allied groups ousted the military dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, leading to the creation and subsequent development of a revolutionary socialist state. Following the successful revolution, Cuba began the construction of a national identity that was genuinely concerned with the state of health and general care for civilian life around the world.

A street in Havana, Cuba. (Photo by Augustin de Montesquiou on Unsplash)

According to a research paper published in 2007 by Robert Huish and John M. Kirk, “Cuba has 42,000 workers in international collaborations in 103 different countries, of whom more than 30,000 are health personnel, including no fewer than 19,000 physicians” and that “Cuba provides more medical personnel to the developing world than all the G-8 countries combined”.

In addition, Huish and Kirk also stated in the same paper that in response to Hurricane Mitch (1998), Cuba not only sent medical brigades to affected areas, but that they also “constructed the Latin American School of Medicine” and that the school “offers a free six-year medical education to students from rural and marginalized communities in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the United States”.